Squid Body + Octopus Legs = New Species?

Excerpt from
original article
by Brittany P. Yap

What appears to be a half-squid, half-octopus specimen found off Keahole Point on the Big Island remains unidentified today and could possibly be a new species, said local biologists.

The specimen was found caught in a filter in one of Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii Authority’s deep-sea water pipelines last week. The pipeline, which runs 3,000 feet deep, sucks up cold, deep-sea water for the tenants of the natural energy lab.

“When we first saw it, I was really delighted because it was new and alive,” said Jan War, operations manager at NELHA. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

According to Richard Young, an oceanography professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the specimen tentatively belongs to the genus Mastigoteuthis, but the species is undetermined.

War, who termed the specimen “octosquid” for the way it looked, said it was about a foot long, with white suction cups, eight tentacles and an octopus head with a squidlike mantle.

**UPDATE!!
July 6, 2007

The specimen [died two days later, then] was preserved and sent to the University of Hawaii-Manoa’s oceanography team, which examined the carcass and today announced the deep-sea squid belongs to an already identified species. However, so little is known about the species that scientists have not yet given it a name.

Positive Change via Positive NewsThis site brings together just a few of the thousands of new species discovered since the year 2000.
Hopefully, it will inspire us to see the world as a place still being explored, and give us the courage to conserve and protect the fragile, shrinking areas of habitat left on Earth...
areas which, as we see here, contain creatures we haven't even yet Imagined...